Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [3]
no longer. It might take you more than a few minutes to learn the new rules, but it's worth
it.
Developing Indispensability
You weren't born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were trained to become
a cog.
There's an alternative available to you. Becoming a linchpin is a stepwise process, a path
in which you develop the attributes that make you indispensable. You can train yourself
to matter. The first step is the most difficult, the step where you acknowledge that this is
a skill, and like all skills, you can (and will) get better at it. Every day, if you focus on the
gifts, art, and connections that characterize the linchpin, you'll become a little more
indispensable.
Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable
pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think
well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.
--David Mamet
THE NEW WORLD OF WORK
We Are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, Literalists, Manual Readers,
TGIF Laborers, Map Followers, and Fearful Employees
The problem is that the bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF
laborers, map followers, and fearful employees are in pain. They're in pain because
they're overlooked, underpaid, laid off, and stressed out.
The first chapter of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations makes it clear that the way for
businesses to win is to break the production of goods into tiny tasks, tasks that can be
undertaken by low-paid people following simple instructions. Smith writes about how
incredibly efficient a pin-making factory is compared to a few pin artisans making pins
by hand. Why hire a supertalented pin maker when ten barely trained pin-making factory
workers using a machine and working together can produce a thousand times more pins,
more quickly, than one talented person working alone can?
For nearly three hundred years, that was the way work worked. What factory owners
want is compliant, low-paid, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines. Factories
created productivity, and productivity produced profits. It was fun while it lasted (for the
factory owners).
Our society is struggling because during times of change, the very last people you need
on your team are well-paid bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF
laborers, map followers, and fearful employees. The compliant masses don't help so
much when you don't know what to do next.
What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We
need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can
lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers
willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization
needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some
organizations haven't realized this yet, or haven't articulated it, but we need artists.
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new
way of getting things done.
That would be you.
Where Were You When the World Changed?
I grew up in a world where people did what they were told, followed instructions, found a
job, made a living, and that was that.
Now we live in a world where all the joy and profit have been squeezed out of following
the rules. Outsourcing and automation and the new marketing punish anyone who is
merely good, merely obedient, and merely reliable. It doesn't matter if you're a wedding
photographer or an insurance broker; there's no longer a clear path to satisfaction in
working for the man.
The factory--that system where organized labor meets patient capital, productivityimproving devices, and leverage--has fallen apart. Ohio and Michigan have lost their
"real" factories, just as the factories of the service industries have crumbled as well.
Worse still, the